


Paint Every Picture in Black, Filled with Pain

by small_town_girl



Category: Glee
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Slut-Shaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-09
Updated: 2012-05-09
Packaged: 2017-11-05 01:52:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/401160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/small_town_girl/pseuds/small_town_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Glee Angst Meme: Everyone's shocked when Rachel storms into the choir room and slaps Puck across the face. She starts yelling about how she doesn't care if he wants to whore himself out to pool cougars but he has no right getting her fiancé involved. Puck runs off, Finn follows, and one of the Gleeks tells her that Puck hasn't had sex with a cougar in over a year. His business is clean and legitimate and making money for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paint Every Picture in Black, Filled with Pain

Puck blinked in shock, wanting to raise his hand and cover his burning cheek but his body wouldn’t move. He had just been sitting with most of New Directions, talking to Finn and Sam about their epic gaming marathon plans for next weekend, when Rachel had walked into the room, her heels clacking hard against the floor to show she was angry. Puck had expected her to go to Finn, it seemed like she found some little thing to be angry at Finn over every other day, but she stood in front of him. And she’d slapped him. Hard.

He felt utterly humiliated and completely vulnerable. More so than he ever had in his life. His mother treated him like he was an incompetent child, Lauren would hurl insults at him on an hourly basis, and his pool clients used to call him some pretty imaginative names during sex, but getting slapped in front of his friends made him feel stripped bare.

“Listen to me, Noah Puckerman,” Rachel yelled as she shrugged her arm away from Finn, who was trying to pull her away. “My fiancé is not a part of your silly little business. Whoring yourself to the desperate women of Lima is fine for you but some people are above that. Some people think more of themselves than being a bought sex toy, some people are meant for more than that. Leave Finn out of your prostitution scam.”

He couldn’t breathe. Sure, everyone knew about him sleeping with the cougars who used his pool service, but no one ever turned it into such a big deal. He liked having sex, there wasn’t anything wrong with that. He knew it was wrong, having sex with married women, but they gave him what he wanted, what he needed, and it was something he didn’t know how to ask from girls his own age. It wasn’t something he was ashamed of, not until Rachel’s declaration.

How many others thought he was a whore? Did they all think he was going to spend his life as a Lima Loser, sleeping his way from one cougar’s bed to the next? Did any of his friends have respect for him?

It was too hot. He was suffocating. He needed air. He sprinted past Rachel, who was still yelling but he couldn’t hear her through the buzzing in his head, pulling at the collar of his shirt. It was too tight. It was restricting. It had to come off.

*****

“What the Hell, Rachel?”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Kurt and Quinn snapped at the same moment. Finn ran off after Puck, leaving Rachel to face the rest of the group. His best friend needed him.

“So maybe I was a little harsh,” Rachel shrugged her shoulders and took the seat Finn had vacated. “But he needed to hear it. Finn’s coming with Kurt and I to New York and he doesn’t need Noah filling his head with how much fun sleeping through the Californian population of women will be. I care about Noah but some people just aren’t meant for great things. It‘s better if he knows the truth.”

“And where in your twisted little mind did you think you had the right to slap him?” Kurt demanded. “He has every right to go to Figgins and if he does, you’ll be lucky if a suspension if the only thing that happens to you.”

“Puck hasn’t slept with any of his clients since Beth was born,” Quinn’s soft voice drifted down from the top row of chairs and Rachel spun in her seat to face her. “He hasn’t,” she stressed when she saw Rachel’s disbelief. “His business has been just cleaning pools with some yard work for over a year. And you know what Rachel, he’s earned good money doing that. What you just did, that was absolutely horrible.”

“You owe him a huge apology,” Kurt added. Puck wasn’t always his favourite person, the jock’s teasing insults sometimes rubbed him the wrong way, but Puck was his brother’s best friend and that meant Puck’s presence was normal at their house. He saw the Puck who talked about his little sister with love, the Puck who could prod Finn out of a bad mood, the Puck who listened when Kurt talked about NYADA. That Puck deserved better than to be torn down by Rachel in front of everyone. “I won’t be surprised if he doesn’t forgive you. That was really low Rachel.”

*****

“Whoa, Dude,” Finn caught up with him just as he pushed through the front doors of the school. “Dude, what she said…no one thinks that.”

“You gonna defend her now?” he had to ask.

“I don’t know how to defend her right now,” Finn admitted. “I came out here for you, not to defend her.”

“I just want to be alone.”

Finn shook his head. “You look like you’re gonna pass out. I’m not leaving.”

Puck hated that Finn could read him so well. It worked both ways. He’d spent the entire weekend at Finn’s, watching bad action movies with Finn and Sam when Finn had learned the truth about his father. Puck had just known that Finn needed to not think about it for a while and had come to the rescue. And now Finn just knew that he needed to not be alone, no matter what he said.

“I…I just….” Puck sighed and wrapped his arms around himself. “She called me a whore.”

“You’re not.”

“I know,” he said softly. “But she made me feel like I was.”

He didn’t want to talk anymore. Finn seemed to understand and they walked away from the school in silence. There was a part of him that felt like never stepping foot in the choir room again but he knew he would tomorrow. He couldn’t let Rachel ruin singing and performing with his friends for him. But he didn’t know how he was supposed to face her without feeling like a whore.


End file.
